


A Primrose Path, Steep and Thorny

by Sage (sageness)



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Backstory, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Misses Clause Challenge, Yuletide, Yuletide 2012
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 16:03:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sageness/pseuds/Sage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She had no memory of a time before the prince. "He has simply always been there," Ophelia told her guest, offhanded as the sun upon a parapet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Primrose Path, Steep and Thorny

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aeriel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aeriel/gifts).



> Boundless thanks to Petra for all the wonderful help and support.
> 
> Happy Yuletide, Aeriel! I hope this is at least vaguely in the neighborhood of what you wanted from the prompt.

  
  
  
  


1.

She had no memory of a time before the prince. "He has simply always been there," Ophelia told her guest, offhanded as the sun upon a parapet. Lady Mathilde was come recently to attend Queen Gertrude, although rumor told that the lady visitor, at fifteen, was in fact exiled whilst her household did separate her from a certain cousin. The queen had entrusted Mathilde to Ophelia's care, as the only other maiden in Hamlet King's war-torn castle who counted older than five and younger than thirty.

Mathilde peered out the window to the courtyard below. "But is his leave-taking not sad for thee?"

Ophelia gazed down at Lord Hamlet from their shared window seat. Much of court life had revolved around him in the last months, and his queenly mother had spared no expense in the good-bye feasting. Ophelia didn't know how to answer. In truth, he was the light that shone most brightly in the eternal gravity of Helsingør, but now that Mathilde was here, Ophelia felt she might bear up more bravely.

"Methinks his looks very fine," Mathilde continued with a wistful cast to her eye.

"His is a noble visage indeed," Ophelia declaimed, but the ending dissolved into giggles. Then her glance fell through the pane and upon his face once more, and her giddy laugh departed as a sigh.

"Oh, my sweetling, truly?" Mathilde clasped Ophelia's hands in her own.

"He watched me grow from an infant," she said with an uncertain shrug. "I hold no interest for him."

"But does he for thee?" Mathilde asked.

Ophelia couldn't suppress a nervous titter. "He's the prince."

Mathilde hummed. "And we are the only ladies at Helsingør who reckon younger than my distant mother."

Ophelia frowned. She had never been to another kingdom, nor even to another keep within Denmark, and there had never been many ladies here. In fact, Queen Gertrude had once referred to her girlhood self as the lone damsel among a throng of rude and boisterous boys, most of whom were now battle-slain with highest honor, and so she had no sisters to call to enliven court with genteel amusements. 

"Is that unusual?" Ophelia asked finally.

This time Mathilde was the one to shrug. "Perhaps not. Hamlet King prefers to war upon Denmark's neighbors, and one can hardly open one's castle to courtly pleasures in such tumult. Canst imagine Helsingør hosting a ball for to show ladies to their best effect with cannonades blasting in the distance?"

Ophelia swallowed. "No, I daresay not." Out the window, the young prince was releasing a young lord from his embrace. He took a step back and gazed long at the castle rising before him. For a moment, it seemed his eyes fixed upon the images of Ophelia and Mathilde through the leaded pane. Then his perusal passed, he turned, and with his man he made the waiting barque.

"Come, then," Mathilde said softly. "Shall we be good children and attend a music lesson today, or shall it be embroidery? Or," she paused, tugging on Ophelia's clasped hands,"wouldst thou learn what mischief we might get up to 'fore we're missed?"

"Cook may give us cake!" Ophelia bounced to her feet.

"And then we'll go to the stables to see the horses," Mathilde decided. "Dost thou ride?"

"No, I never have," she said as they left her closet. "The queen takes no pleasure in it, else they might have taught me."

"Well, I was raised ahorseback from a girl. We'll ask if they can find palfreys to take us up the stream." Mathilde seemed certain, and Father was at the king's business. Laertes was doubtless with his tutor, in his own rush to leave Helsingør. "Is this the way?" Mathilde asked as they reached the turning to the servants' stair.

"Aye," Ophelia said, and took her hand as they went down.

It was not that day, nor the next, but in the middle of the week following that they lay in a tree-lined meadow above the river's grassy bank and Mathilde told her secret. "My Johannes," she said, as she plaited early autumn flowers into Ophelia's hair, "whom my father has fostered these five years, is not the heir of the earl his father. Johannes is but a youngest son, and Father insists I am only to be betrothed to an heir. Thus the scandal."

"Thou art betrothed?" Ophelia asked in surprise.

"No," Mathilde said, curtly tugging Ophelia's braid back into place, "that was not to be. Surely thou knowest by now that not all maidens go chastely to their bridal beds." Ophelia tried to turn her head in surprise, but Mathilde held the plait in place firmly and would not let her move.

"But..." she trailed off. Ophelia had perhaps not entirely understood there was an element of choice in the matter. Ladies were chaste by inborn virtue, were they not? Servant girls and country peasants grew by other standards, or at least that was what she had been long ago taught by her nurse, when she still had a nurse and was much too young to conceive what the woman was talking about. Come to think on it, mayhap the lecture had been her father's. Mathilde tugged another lock of hair, bound it with another bloom, and hummed a question. Ophelia shrugged. "I do not know what I thought."

"What, that it be sin? Even the priests agree it cannot be adultery if neither are married, and yet they want women virgins unto their marriage bed whilst men themselves run rampant."

"And that is why the lord thy father sent thee to us?" Ophelia looked up, meeting Mathilde's eyes for the first time since her confession. 

Above her, Mathilde's face was framed against the clear autumn sky and towering branches of the park. "Here, into a kingdom at war, to a court with no more refinement than a crone's sewing basket, into the very belly of boredom with but one fair inmate for company."

Ophelia giggled. "Belly of boredom. I like that."

Tying off the last stem, Mathilde said, "Once I am free to go home again, I should like to take thee with me. Helsingør is no place for growing girls such as thee and me."

Ophelia shivered and sat up. The park around them seemed suddenly dark, even though the sun still shone overhead and the leaves of the trees around them had hardly begun to tip yellow. Ophelia took one of Mathilde's hands and squeezed it tightly because she could not speak. She leaned close against her, not loosing Mathilde's hand as tears of sudden heartbreak began to fall.

Mathilde wrapped her into an embrace and spoke against her cheek. "Sweetling. Dear Ophelia, I am sorry for rash and hurtful words against your home. I should not have said—"

Ophelia swallowed hard and found her voice again. "No, I beg thee do not misunderstand. The matter is that I would fain give a great deal to go out of this place with thee, only my father would never allow it. If my mother were alive, then perchance it could be, or if I had an aunt whom he could send to accompany me in the world, but alas."

"Alas, that I am but a lady so besmirched." Ophelia blushed to hear Mathilde mention her shame unstoppered, and Mathilde kissed her reddened cheek. "Perhaps thy good father could yet be convinced?" Mathilde asked, but her tone was doubtful.

"If only such a thing could be, but I am as a stone encircling his signet. I am indifferent to him but by my absence, which all too greatly hearkens my mother's." Ophelia scrubbed her face with her hands and heaved a great, bitter sigh. "Truly, I might be her very portrait miniature to carry in his pocket or shut away in a drawer."

"And never will he let thee go," Mathilde mused; "but nay, he must. Thou wilt marry and have children. 'Tis the way of things! Even fathers do not fault it."

Ophelia lay her head upon Mathilde's shoulder. "Mayhap he hath made provision and not yet deemed me grown enough to know it...but enough of that. Tell'st me of the world outside tired Helsingør?"

 

2.

December brought Prince Hamlet home at his queen mother's insistence, though the time between Michaelmas term and Hilary was but brief and all the land white with snow. Mathilde received from her family a packet of letters and a thick woolen coat lined in brilliant blue silk. It was finer than anything Ophelia had ever touched, and she could not help slipping her fingers into the sleeves to stroke the lustrous cloth. Alas, Mathilde had wanted nothing more than a free and welcome passage home, and Ophelia's petting comforts were no solace to her.

In the lobby she found her brother Laertes with Master Norbert, his ancient tutor, and the young prince Hamlet, with Prince Hamlet and the tutor in a fit of laughter whilst Laertes stood and stamped and tugged at his hair. "I know this one, only give me a moment," he cried.

"Thou didst say so of the last one, as well," Lord Hamlet replied, grinning.

Laertes heaved a great sigh and collapsed to the paving stones, head hung low. "Is it Byzantium?" he asked.

Hamlet raised his eyebrows. Master Norbert shook his snowy head. "Egypt, my lad. Egypt."

"O why would they ask me of Egypt?" Laertes answered in a voice close to a wail. "There are no Egyptians here."

"Nay, brother, but the pharaohs were kings of a great empire and surely essential to thy study of kingship," said Ophelia as Laertes scowled up at her. "I beg pardon, my lord," she added, as Lord Hamlet and Master Norbert made to greet her.

"The lady Ophelia," said the prince, and the bright smile on his face twisted something within her breast.

"Is not the lady Mathilde with thee?" Laertes asked.

Ophelia bit her tongue upon her first response, as it would be improper to chasten him in public for his flirtatious eye. "Nay, I am all unaccompanied."

"But now you are here with us," answered Lord Hamlet, "and in our good company."

"And gratified to be so welcomed, my lord," she said, repressing a laugh at his mock gallantry. To Laertes she asked, "How fare the practice examinations?"

He rubbed a hand hard over his face. "I beg thee not to mention them."

Prince Hamlet clapped him on the back. "He will do very well."

Master Norbert's face did carve itself into a furrow. "In maths, he will. In history and philosophy, there is much work to be done."

"There are more than two months, yet, are there not?" Ophelia asked.

"Aye," said Laertes, taking her hand and hoisting himself to his feet. "Eleven weeks. Ask me another, good tutor?"

Master Norbert stroked his beard a moment and then hummed in satisfaction. "Explain the conflict between the Catholic and Lutheran factions, first from one's perspective and thence from the other."

"Oh, mercy!" cried Prince Hamlet. "Lady Ophelia, will you walk with me in the gallery? Let us abandon that discord to Laertes and his good tutor."

"Of course, my lord." She threw a cheerfully taunting wave to her brother and took the prince's offered arm as they mounted the stair to the gallery above the grand lobby.

"Thy happiness is a pleasing sight," he said, but his tone was less gallant now and more that of the boy she had watched at play with the older children of the castle when she was too small to join them. She realized suddenly that of course he did not really know her at all. She was merely the daughter of Polonius, and he surely knew not what topic to suggest for casual discourse.

"I am pleased, my lord, to see you home again, as it does brighten your noble parents' court."

He grinned at her. "It giveth thee something more to do than read of ancient pharaohs?"

She shrugged. "My lord father has many books, and I daresay the lady Mathilde would despair of my company did we spend each hour of each day together."

He laughed. "I have made such friends in Wittenberg," he said, then stopped before the balustrade and set his gaze upon the wide hall below, empty but for Laertes waving his hands in gestures of thwarted memory. "There is a crucial difference, however; this hall should be full of people come to court, both on kingly business and for mutual entertainment."

With a wan smile, she nodded. "Indeed, my lord. It is many years since I have known it so."

"And thou a maiden in bloom with naught a swain to woo her."

"My lord," she said, exasperated.

"Hmm?"

"Well, if your lordship cares to play at storied flattery, tell me what sort of swain you would send me. A boatswain? Coxswain? A good shepherd of the hills?"

"My heart, it breaketh at thy lack of poetical feeling. Would I send to thee some churlish seaman, fair nymph?" He stopped then, with a high pillar blocking them from sight of her brother and good Norbert, and drew her hand to his lips. "No, indeed I would not."

Breath deserted her for a moment, so surprised was she. "My Lord Hamlet," she whispered, finally. "I must confess I know not how to receive this game. This is but lonely Helsingør, and I am unschooled in the matter."

He held her gaze for what seemed the toll of an hour, and then he placed her trapped hand back upon his arm, held in place with his other hand. Then they began to walk again. "I do not mean to toy with thee, but thou art a rare spark of life in the gloom of my father's court."

She did not answer as there was no answer she could make. He was the prince; if he wished her company to ease the winter's dullness, then he would have it.

As they neared the stair to descend to the lobby, he stopped again and this time spoke shyly. "If thy interest turns to books, I would welcome thee in the library above. I am often there before supper, and sometimes after." He paused, and then added, "Others come and go, too. It would be not unseemly."

Ophelia feared the laugh she was suppressing did show in her eyes, but nothing unseemly ever happened in Helsingør, and there were few enough folk in the castle to be bothered, besides. "I should be glad to, my lord. Perhaps tomorrow, unless my lord father delays me."

The prince made for a moment as if to kiss her hand again, but then he only clasped it warmly before resettling it upon his arm and leading her to the stair. "Let us go and rescue thy good brother from his troubles."

She had a long tale to tell Mathilde that night.

December passed into January, and Lord Hamlet took his leave of Denmark again. This time Ophelia wished him good-bye in the snow-blown courtyard and allowed him to kiss her frozen hand. He did the same with Mathilde before turning to wish Laertes good fortune. 

Ophelia did not believe he would write to her.

It surprised her so much when he did that she could hardly understand his words. Then she realized it was supposed to be poetical verse, and she had to pick the phrases apart to understand his meaning. At least Mathilde was there to laugh with and help her invent a courteous reply.

Mathilde stayed at Helsingør until the end of July, when to the surprise of everyone, her mother's father arrived by carriage to deliver her home to Bremen, where suitors awaited her. Young Johannes was married and moved to Bohemia. 

The news struck them like a blow, and Ophelia did not sleep a wink Mathilde's last night, but they held one another in their arms as they wept.

In the morning, Mathilde did gift unto Ophelia her beloved silk-lined coat and promise to write. Her lord grandfather did not seem cruel, Ophelia thought, as she listened to his exchange with her lord father upon the sisterly affection between the maids. Mathilde whispered in her ear, "Thou'lt come. Once I am settled, I shall send for thee."

Fresh tears overflowed and Ophelia could but nod her yes.

Summer came, but between his school terms, Lord Hamlet was bade to visit all the courts of Denmark's many neighbors in a slow expedition of princely courtesy. He wrote to Ophelia with frequency. Sometimes the missives counted a thick sheaf of labored artifice, and then he wrote sometimes a scrap of two lines comparing the length of his host's beard to his native wit, and the latter meant as much to her as all his many professions of love.

 

3.

"The king is dead! The king is dead!" The cry went up in the afternoon, when the kitchens were busy preparing the evening's repast and Ophelia was sitting in a drafty corner of the queen's receiving room, stabbing dutifully at her embroidery. Queen Gertrude sprang to her feet, reaching the door to the chamber just as a footman pushed it open ahead of Ophelia's father.

"Madame," Father said in grave tones, reaching for Queen Gertrude's hand. 

"Dead, they say! How can this be?" she cried, and sidestepped him into the corridor. Father turned and followed after her majesty, and Ophelia couldn't decipher what he told her. 

Lady Avys, the current favorite and most senior of the queen's ladies in waiting quietly said, "I shall follow anon. Do you go, good ladies, and prepare for the royal mourning."

Ophelia didn't know what that meant, but the other three ladies in the room were rapidly packing away their sewing and rushing off to do whatever it was they were meant to do when one's king had died, and not, apparently, in battle. Ophelia assumed this would involve time in prayer in the chapel, and also that her father would be consumed with calling home young Prince Hamlet from Wittenberg and his uncle Prince Claudius from the war, as well as convening a meeting of the nobility to elect either man king. For all she might guess, it could be weeks before she saw her father again.

She ghosted along the halls, watching and listening as servants ran to and fro, until finally she washed upon the familiar shores of the kitchens. There Cook shouted orders left and right as blood flowed in the yard beyond and kitchen boys hauled in the slaughter. She slipped out unseen; this was no time to beg a cheese or slice of cake. She would only be in the way. Her feet led her to her father's chamber, where he sat at his enormous desk and gave orders to the servants who stood at attention before him. The room was teeming with people all awaiting their turn, and it was easy for her to slide along behind them and perch upon a corner settee and watch. Father did not see her and none of the other men acknowledged her, so well was she hidden in plain sight. In its way it was quite exciting. There were so many details to manage, so many names and places and facts that all held their place within her father's boundless mind. As she watched, she learned that Prince Claudius was already in the castle, that the late king had died of snakebite, which was an unheard of thing in Helsingør, and that the bereft queen would not be waited upon, even by Lady Avys. Queen Gertrude wanted only her husband or her son; no one quite knew which Hamlet she called for and dared not ask.

Quite a long time passed, and a great many letters had Father or his scribes written and sent out before Father looked up and noticed her. "Ophelia, what dost thou here?" he said.

She smiled wanly and shrugged. "The ladies went to their funerary business and I did not know what should be done."

"Where is thy nurse, child?" he asked with a lost look in his eye.

Ophelia couldn't help her sharp look of disbelief, but she did manage to measure her tone. "My good lord, you ended her service when I was thirteen, these three years gone."

"Three..." he said, bemused, and then he covered his mouth as she added softly, "Father, it was my understanding that you were aware I had no lady's maid since the last was given to the queen."

At that moment another functionary rushed in, calling, "My lord Polonius, an urgent matter."

To Ophelia, her father said, "Go thee and find thy chambermaid, then, and have her comply with Lady Avys' servant to get thee properly accoutered. I will speak to Reynaldo about thy requirements." Then his attention fastened hard upon his new visitor and Ophelia was quite forgotten.

Young Prince Hamlet arrived home to Helsingør with a speed suggesting he'd beseeched the very Elbe into flood. The funeral followed soon upon, with the queen encompassed in mourning gauze and young Hamlet bearing hollow circles below his reddened eyes. Ophelia dared not approach him, but Laertes stepped forward to speak some words of comfort unto him, and Ophelia stood by, silent but sure, and was pleased to see Prince Hamlet's glance stray once and again her way.

It was most improper and terribly late that night that he came to her door, candle in hand, and wrapped her in fierce embrace. In his grief how could she but let her sovereign prince into her room, and from there into her bed? It was warm within the becurtained bed. "I wrote to thee only last week," he said between kisses.

"I fear your travels have outpaced your missive," she said, stroking the pale line of his collar bone.

He breathed in sharply, as if in pain, and lay his head upon her breast a moment. Then he looked up at her again and swallowed hard. "I wrote of the curve of thy neck, the shape of thy ear, the windy cascade of thy hair."

"Windy cascade?" She arched a brow and giggled at Hamlet's blush.

"It was meant to be poetical," he mumbled.

She leaned up and kissed him firmly. "When it arrives, I shall treasure it."

"I do confess now, Ophelia, I treasure thee."

Her breath caught at the look of love in his eyes. "My lord," she whispered into his kiss, and then, "and I you."

There was blood on the sheet in the morning, but it wasn't yet laundry day and, besides, all the servants were busy with the host of funeral guests in the castle. The prince had gone in the night, she knew not when, but better that than disgrace her by staying.

Late the next morning he found her and suggested a nuncheon walk in the park at the river's mouth. Smiling, she went, and guided him to the private meadow where she and Mathilde had spent so many an afternoon. Cook's basket of food was gleaned from the funeral feast, but the wassail in the jug was a bright spark of comfort on a brisk coastal day. He held her close, both for kisses and warmth, and whispered lines of what she felt sure he thought was poetry, and now and then did he utter a phrase so lovely and sincere that her laughter failed entirely and all she could do was kiss him.

"It cheers my heart to make thee laugh," he said to her then.

"I will gladly give you that good cheer, my lord, and whatever else would bring you joy in sorrow."

"Wouldst thou?" he asked, with all the weight of the hour's kisses. 

It had been recklessly said, but the late autumn trees did surround them, and it seemed suddenly important, even necessary, that the pleasures he had shown her in the night be remade and sanctified by sunlight. She kissed him firmly and held his gaze as her fingers slipped between doublet and hose, caressing the smooth fabric of his shirt. He was warm underneath it, and warmer still as he undid his hose and drew her astride him. 

The act was not as pleasant as it had been the night before, but for that Ophelia blamed the chill air and incommodious location. He kissed her afterward with his fingers buried in her hair. "My love, my beauteous Ophelia," he said. "Tonight I will to thee again and make it a sweeter bounty." 

"My lord, I shall count the moments," she whispered against his mouth and kissed him again. Finally they rose, and she began repairing the disorder of her clothing. She knew they must go in soon. The queen would send someone for him. The queen might even call for Ophelia to attend her, although that was far less likely. 

"Beautified nymph," he said, and she couldn't suppress a snicker. Terrible verse aside, he had declared his love in words and letters. Never mind the ladies of Wittenberg or the princesses he met on his courtly visitations, Lord Hamlet had chosen her and now acted upon it; he would come again to her bed tonight, as a king would to a queen's. Except that no betrothal could be made with mourning rites still upon them or she would ask him to take her hand at once...but in a little time, perhaps?

Lord Hamlet retrieved the empty basket and the wassail jug, and Ophelia shook the grass and leaves from her underskirts. He looked a mess, and she probably did as well, but there was nothing for it. She took his free hand and kissed his fingertips. Laughing, he adjusted his grasp and returned the gesture, and with fingers interlaced, they made their slow way in to greet the queen.

 

4.

Every day or night Prince Hamlet came to her, and although Prince Hamlet grieved his father still, he seemed in private to be a man of good cheer and for many weeks Ophelia was happier than she'd ever been. He confided in her his business, of confronting and pleading his youth to those electorate lords who would have him succeed his father as king. "I must have another year at Wittenberg," he told her in the warm nest of her bed.

"But then to return," she said, pressing his hand warm against her belly. "Or take me with thee as thy wife."

His breath caught in his throat and she watched the thoughts flit within his eyes as one counting sums. "Thy courses are late," he said.

"Prize to his lordship." She pulled the face she always did when he spoke an obvious fact. 

"Thou mightst have told me," he protested.

"As if you haven't been here to know for yourself, my lord?" 

He scowled at her sarcasm. 

"It is some six weeks, is it not, that nightly thou hast come to me?"

"My dear Ophelia," he began but trailed off into silence. After a moment, he said, "I will make consultation to learn what best decision to take. Perhaps we could both away to Germany."

She kissed him in agreement and drifted off to sleep wrapped in that happy dream. In the morning Ophelia woke with a calm demeanor she had not felt in months. Her contentment lasted through breakfast, where she received a letter from her brother in France, who was returning next week for the coronation. Then from a passing lady she heard the morning's news: Queen Gertrude and Prince Claudius were to be married once his coronation was enacted, and the young prince had flown from the castle in a most extreme distemper. It was days before she saw him again.

In the afternoons, Ophelia sat in attendance upon the queen with the other ladies and worked now upon her sewing. She was glad to listen to the happy chatter, for in the days immediately after King Hamlet's death, Queen Gertrude was fraught with distress over what would become of herself if her brother-in-law came to the throne with a new queen in tow. Perhaps it was unfitting to take her husband's brother's hand, she admitted to them, but to otherwise face eviction from her rooms, or even from the castle entire, all for the sake of a cursèd snakebite! To Ophelia, accepting Claudius' offer, or even indeed Gertrude pressing her suit upon him, seemed entirely reasonable. When she said as much to Hamlet when he came to her on the third night, he ranted an hour at her upon the royal nuptials, and then he left her room with neither parting kiss nor mention of their own future plans.

Ophelia passed the coronation ceremony and reception at the side of her brother Laertes, who spent the greater part of it commenting on the various royal guests and comparing them to what he had seen so far in Paris. That was almost all of what he would reveal to her of what his life in France was like, and it was enough to make her believe the worst of every wink and nod the gentlemen shared between themselves at remarks she could not understand. He was so lordly in his manner, now that he had gone away to school. He had never been such a despot when they were children, she thought, except in the way that all older brothers were tyrants to their small siblings. Now he seemed to be doing his best imitation of their lord father, except that Ophelia could answer Laertes with a mocking stare and ignore his play-acting at parenthood.

She had no such freedom with her father. Though she was seething with fury, there was no choice but to send the letter as she was required:

  
  


> To my most esteemed Prince Hamlet, 
> 
> My lord father instructs me to inform you today that I may no longer treat with your lordship. I may not receive further missives or tokens from your lordship, nor should you expect such from me. I beg you hold in your heart, beloved Prince, that beyond your aid I have no recourse. With utmost regret and shattered heart, I am ever your devoted and loving—  
>                                                                                            Ophelia

  
  


Though she awaited word with increasing anxiety, Prince Hamlet did neither reply nor come to her rooms in the night. She heard nothing from him for several days until a snowy afternoon when he appeared in her closet. She was nålbinding the last row of a woolen baby sock, and at first all she could do was stare at him speechless. He seemed equally trapped in silence, as all he did was gaze upon her. Finally, she stood, took his hand, and lay it upon her cheek as she caressed his face with her other hand. "My lord," she whispered. "My beloved Hamlet."

He kissed her fingers as he used to, and then held her hand close against his face as his eyes fell shut.

It was an easy thing to step forward, to press against him in a partial embrace. "My lord, you well know I am trapped," she whispered against his neck, "and you must save me. Find some way to take me out of here." She swallowed hard and added, "If not for my love, then consider the sake of your child."

His eyes opened with a look so piteous she could not describe it, but he pulled free of her and shuffled steadily out of her grasp. 

"My lord, please," she said. "Please take me out of Helsingør, or else give me some means to go on my own. Mathilde would find a place for me in Saxony if only I can get me there." The prince's gaze darted to the socks atop her sewing basket, and then back to her face, where it remained fixed as he backed out of her chamber, shook his head darkly, and flew. 

The tears came as if dispatched from her very womb, and it was only her terrible fortune that an unfamiliar servant heard her noise from the hall and threatened to call Lady Avys to attend her, as if the chamberlain's daughter were anything to make a fuss over. "I will go me anon to my lord father," she promised the woman if only to silence her, and then by another unfortunate accident found him unoccupied in the lobby, as if some interfering angel had called him there to witness her distress.

"O, my lord," she said in surprise. It could not be the unvarnished truth she told him, for she had closely observed his peculiar limitations, especially where concerned women and particularly herself, and yet if Hamlet would refuse to aid her, then mayhap her father would somehow help her secret cause.

Her words stumbled forth in all their unfeigned anxiety while her mind raced to sort what truths she could easily admit to him. But then her father spoke of Hamlet's love for her! Her argument slipped out of her head like water through a sieve: if it could in truth be love! If all this were but a hard brush with grief wrought by his mother's hasty marriage, as her father seemed to believe, then she could surely spare her prince a little time. And if there could be not love nor travel south, then she could go down to Cook and beg her trade a jewelèd brooch for a maiden's solution.

Poor maiden she that trusted her father.

Poor maiden she that could speak not her rage against the noble prince with both father and king looking on. 

The plan dissolved itself within the week, inundated by tears, and so seemed the specter of the babe within to vanish from her. A nunnery indeed, and to have her wish to fly flung back at her thus! She would choke on her rage. She would choke, and the old men did naught but prattle and strain her very last nerve. She had never cozened him, as well he knew. Her love had been freely given always and received like love to love in turn, but now – now what had thought she love did poison every fiber.

 

5.

When the cry went up of her father's death, Ophelia at first could not believe it. The prince could not abuse her so and then take from her the steadfast anchor to which she cleaved. "My lady, I grieve but it is so," spake kind Marcellus to her in the corridor as he prevented her from the room where his majesty held Prince Hamlet. She could hear Hamlet's unholy laugh, the false one he used for mocking courtly sycophants, and something within her simply stopped. There was no longer breath in her lungs nor thought in her brain. Her father was dead and Hamlet had slain him. Hamlet's accusation echoed like a battle drum from afar: her wantonness hath made him mad. Wantonness? He was not mad, only false. Only cruel beyond belief to use her thus.

She did not remember how she reached Hamlet's rooms, but once there she was methodical. She destroyed everything she could. She shredded his clothes and tore the pages from his derelict books. She cut apart the mattress, the counterpane, the curtains from the bed. She took up the carpets and shattered the piss-pot upon the flags. The sickness in her belly roiled afresh, and she vomited into his wardrobe of finery. 

She didn't feel better; nor did she feel better later when she learned he was exiled to England, never to return. She sat to write to Mathilde but could not commend the truth of her father's murder to mere paper. At a stroke, all was lost. Such enormity could not mere ink sustain. 

Time vanished from her mind again, and she next knew that she was making the walk south from the castle's park on the peninsula to the neat brown-brick of Helsingør town. It was a busy market day, and only now and then did she overtake herself as she raved at folk on the street. She pushed through the market and smote an ass upon the cheek for its wall-eyed stare. The people murmured and noted the fineness of her dress and called her "milady", but none could make any repair to the rent torn in her world. None did ought but stare. 

The walk north to the castle was long and her felt slippers had grown holes in them that her toes did bleed through. In the halls of the castle she raved anew because her father was dead, her mother was dead, her brother was gone, and her beloved had wrought a blight upon her. Who was there now to see she be fed, much less manage the great legacy her father had surely left, being the chancellor to the king? The guards, as the townsfolk, did naught but stare. The pair of queen's ladies she passed in the lobby did naught but blanch and hurry away. After a time she achieved a gnat in the form of that Horatio to whom Lord Hamlet had professed his undying love. Perhaps their love was even true for Hamlet, as it could not end in childbed.

Horatio proved a dogged gnat. He did not lose her but once, and then only to go in unto the queen.

The queen. She was hardly a mother to Hamlet. Ophelia said so, in her way, but Queen Gertrude seemed to hear it not. In her frightened eyes she seemed to view Ophelia as if her derangement be a contagion, and how many times must need Ophelia shout, "Mark!" to make herself understood? To the new King Claudius of the tired eyes, she was but the poor minion his cousin Hamlet was tumbling, and one he would dispatch dispassionately as swat at a mayfly. There was no one now to care, and so Ophelia might give vent to all the spleen in the world...and now that she lacked for parents, who remained to her but the very parents of Denmark state? To the king and queen should the duty fall now that Prince Hamlet's destruction and their own inaction cast her into the black. 

She knew herself flung away as onto a midden heap without even so paltry care as the one she once named "Father". 

Tears splashed upon her blue-lined woolen coat. She did call her anguished cry for help, but only Horatio attended and he could mend no thing. He was but a poor student of Wittenberg, but he played at Ganymede with Hamlet. Horatio did not even stay in Denmark, though within the icy park he bid her kindly, "Stay, stay my lady. You know not your own mind nor what is safe." 

"You are my brother not," she stated solemnly. 

"I could be like unto a brother, my lady," he answered her, extending a chaste brown hand for to wipe her tears. But his words dredged a ditty to the front of her brain and she fled him, fled and lost him in the maze of willows trailing, flew until she was in the river, well into the cold profundity of the winter-black wet. 

A queenly willow swept by far above, and Ophelia reached with both hands for its low-flowing, growing, slowing branches, but one slipped from her hand and the other broke with a snap, and so she floated under the endless white sky with a wand of willow in her grasp and sang a slow, leafless song to the low, wet willows as she wended and wended and went.

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> For readers less familiar with Hamlet, in canon, everyone Ophelia interacts with, except perhaps for Laertes, has significant power over her life. Aeriel asked for a story in which Ophelia gets to make a choice, and so this story is about narrow options, choices, and consequences.
> 
> Also, Early Modern grammar is sneaky. I've used the second person singular/familiar where story-appropriate, but otherwise I've tried to err toward 21st century readability. If any errors slipped through, please let me know so I can correct them.
> 
> The title comes from Hamlet Act I, Scene iii, in which Ophelia answers, in effect, "I will if you will." Laertes won't, as they both very well know, and then Polonius shows up to shut the stable door long after the proverbial horse has bolted.
> 
> Ophelia:  
> I shall th’ effect of this good lesson keep,  
> As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother,  
> Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,  
> Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,  
> Whiles, like a puff’d and reckless libertine,  
> Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,  
> And recks not his own rede.


End file.
